


Heart's Ease

by Gairid



Category: Vampire Chronicles - All Media Types, Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
Genre: M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-11
Updated: 2010-02-11
Packaged: 2017-10-07 04:20:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/61363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gairid/pseuds/Gairid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A fleeting tender moment in Louis's vampire infancy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heart's Ease

I heard him playing the fortepiano in the parlour. Lestat had awakened some time before I had, as he did most nights and the desultory manner in which he played bespoke his supreme boredom.

I rose, smoothing my disheveled clothes in a distracted way; I was anxious to quiet the tearing thirst and put it behind me for the night. It was always this way, the pain of it gnawing at me so insistently that I could barely think. I hated the feeling, the way it left me with barely any will at all except for the need to hunt—the need for blood.

When I entered the room Lestat looked up and regarded my approach with hooded eyes. The look itself was easy enough to read, projecting the distance he had been adding to with deliberate care after an explosive altercation we'd had over my wish to be left alone when I hunted. We exchanged a few politely brittle words across the beautifully painted little instrument and when I'd turned to leave he played a soft little arpeggio.

"_Ne sois pas long, Louis_."

It was not said with his usual possessive petulance, but with a certain plaintiveness I was unused to hearing. At first I was suspicious that he was trying to manipulate me in yet another way. He must not have expected me to turn and look for his eyes were no longer opaque, but soft. It was the way he had looked at me when he found me; the way he looked at me when he first brought me to him and, God help me, my heart rose, beating that much faster for the look in his eyes and soaring when he smiled suddenly, flashing his splendid fangs.

I smiled back tentatively."_Non, je ne serais pas long_."

I was true to my word, rousing myself as quickly as I was able to from the blood-swoon. The tenderness I'd seen in his eyes had not been an imagining and his smile? It was the first in weeks that was not derisive and cool. So it was that when I returned I was both relieved and disappointed to find the townhouse dark and quiet.

Upon entering, I realized that although Lestat was not in the house, he was close, perhaps in the courtyard inspecting what had been done to it during the day. He had announced his plan to add a fountain, potted plantings and perhaps a bench to liven up the cobbled square with the lone chinaberry tree that grew close by the small stable where we kept the horses. He had hired on one _Monsieur_ Nelson, a purveyor of such things, to do the work and each night he would inspect the courtyard with a critical eye to placement.

He'd placed several lanterns about the courtyard and steady illumination was haloed with humidity. The newly installed plants seemed as though they had always been there, for they mingled perfectly with the Queen's Wreath that twined up the stairway rails. The plants threw monstrous shadows on the far brick wall, darkly fantastic.

"What think you, Louis?" Lestat asked. He separated himself from the larger shadows beneath the chinaberry and came to stand beside me.

It was a question that could have been answered a thousand different ways, a question that could take us in a thousand directions. What did I think of the work? What did I think of the night? Of his presence? The heady, particular scent of his skin? His lion's mane of hair?

"It is a place transformed." I told him. It was the truth after all, for the plants marvelously lent their shapes and scents and muted night-time colors to the mysterious night in a place that was secluded from the world, as secret as we ourselves were.

His posture became intimate as he leaned in closer to my face. He stroked the sleeve of my jacket with his beautiful white fingers.

"You like it then?"

His voice sent ripples down my spine

"Very much.

"Come. Sit with me."

His hand dropped from my sleeve and he gestured toward a stone bench. _Monsieur_ Nelson had earned his money, for upon a more detailed examination, the plants he had installed appeared to belong in their places and the ornaments took up spaces among them in a wholly pleasing way. It was a departure from Lestat's usual tastes; I would have expected a formal parterre, a marble fountain rather than the smaller tiered stone one burbling quietly in the far corner.

"It is not so formal as I had expected." I said as we sat down together.

"No. "Lestat said, sweeping the area with a glance. "I wanted it to look more like the gardens at Pointe du Lac. "

I looked at him.

"The gardens? They have become hugely overgrown. They did not look thus when they were maintained."

"Just so." he said. "I adore that. Everything is lush here, already opulent, dripping with life and scent. Everything here is primitive. Wild. It's barely held back at all by humans. Such a place!"

His uncomplicated pleasure dissolved my reservations about manipulation or maneuvering but it saddened me as well, for it came in force to me just how little he allowed himself to share with me.

"I would have thought you would like a more--controlled setting. Something more elegant, more refined."

His fine mouth quirked. "I do tend to enjoy such things, _oui_? A veritable dandy! I have heard myself described so quite often. _Je pense qu'il amuse très_. But then, you don't know how my life was before--before all this." He waved vaguely and focused on some middle distance that was beyond me.

"No." I muttered. "I don't."

His glance was not sharp and angry as I anticipated even as the words left my mouth, but instead I saw love in his eyes. Love and torment and some specific pain I could not put a name to. I was again struck by his mood. He usually had little use for inner reflection.

"Of course you don't. How could you? You know what I have let slip. You know only what I tell you."

He closed his eyes for a long moment, long enough for me to notice with utter fascination how the blood pulsed through the elegant tracery of blue just visible at the loosened neckline of his finely tailored shirt. He wore no jacket and the lace jabot he favored were nowhere in evidence. These were mere ornaments for his beauty, barely registered at the best of times. Indeed, in the absence of these things, his delectable skin was shown me. He opened his eyes just as I began to lose myself in contemplation of him. He smiled.

"Do you know, Louis, that you are my heart's ease?"

It was the last thing I had expected him to say at that moment.

"And you my heart's turmoil, my love."

He drew me close.

"I know it well." he murmured into my hair. "But it will not always be so. "

FIN

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not claim ownership of Ms. Rice's characters or her works. I write these stories for love of them; no profit is reaped.


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